Word of the Day

This week’s bite has a different flavor than the last two. It’s a bit more conventional fantasy. I got the idea from a ten foot high pile of snow that reminded me of a lizard skull. Long past when the rest of the snow had melted, this monster pile of snow sat in the middle of a brown patch of grass and kicked my mind into writing mode. The first line came to me and I imagined it was going to be a novel, because I loved the line so much. The ideas fell off around 1500 words and I got frustrated with it so I left it hanging. When I started this challenge with myself a few weeks...

Here are your science tidbits for the week: 1) We’ve all read about the zombie ants, now there are mummy beetles too! A blog post by Ed Yong about some cool Aussie bees and how they defend their hive against intruding beetles. 2) Here’s a ScienceDaily post about a new material designed to mimic human skin. They hope to use this tech for much more than just medical purposes, suggesting it could be used for ships and spacecraft. 3) An article about inter-species nookie between mammoths and elephants on LiveScience. (Am I the only one who lives for the day that they Jurassic Park up...

So far in this one flash fiction a week challenge I’ve been having a great time. Writing flash fiction is teaching me tons about brevity and the best ways to get things across. Not only that, but it’s been a hoot. The titles and taglines have come fast. Honestly, that’s what I was most worried about starting this. How in the world was I going to come up with 50 plus titles a year? It seemed impossible to me. Yes indeedy, I do have title issues, but it seems not with these guys. I wonder why that is? Maybe because I’m trying so hard not to be serious. Anyway, this...

While I browsed through my Google Reader feed this morning, an idea occurred to me. I’m a big science fiction fan, and though I haven’t written much in the genre yet, I know I will. I’m always on the lookout for cool science tidbits that would make good story fodder. Every week I’ll pluck out a few of the best and put them up here for your (and my) brainstorming pleasure. I’m going to shoot for Fridays with this, but this week I’m putting it up a little early because I’m hoping to dedicate tomorrow to writing since I have the day off. This...

Here is the link to my first ever weekly (I hope) flash fiction, Beetle Juice. I might write another story that takes place in this world at some point because I find the magic system intriguing. This was written and edited over the course of two days. I concentrated mostly on developing the magic system, so the characterization isn’t as strong as I’d like. I’d love to hear what you think, so please leave a comment if you feel inclined. I’m going to try to put one up one of these every Wednesday. The next piece of flash will either be one about a man with a foot...

I wrote a piece of flash fiction over the weekend for an anthology taking submissions on KindleBoards. Generally, this form is considered to be any piece of fiction under 1000 words, though some markets constrain the requirements further. I’ve never been much for writing short stories, I think mostly because I tried to use my own ideas and I always want to expand on them until the story no longer fit within the confining word counts. Since someone else provided the seed for this one, it was easier for me to shape that idea into a bite-sized morsel of story than usual. This story,...